SAD NEWS: Eric Griffiths - Quarryman

I have just heard some very sad news - Eric Griffiths of the Quarrymen has passed away. I was lucky enough to see the Quarrymen play live a couple of years back and their show was really entertaining - laced with humour and good music. Eric played guitar for the Quarrymen from 1956 until 1958, with both John and Paul. He continued to play with the revived Quarrymen from 1997 to the end of 2004.

I saw him a few times at the Liverpool Beatles Convention and he always had a big smile on his face (except on stage where he looked very serious!) and was always really friendly to the fans. He will be greatly missed.

Eric - in his own words:

I was born in Denbigh, North Wales, on 31 October 1940 and lived in a small village near Denbigh until I was 4 years old when my family returned to Liverpool.

�� I lived with my mother, sister and grandparents (my father was a pilot in the RAF and was killed during the Second World War) until I was 10 when I moved to Woolton. I obtained a scholarship to Quarry Bank High School when I was 11. It was at Quarry Bank that I first met John Lennon, Pete Shotton and Rod Davis.

�� After the first year at school, John, Pete and I� were in the same 'House' at Quarry and first became friendly, over the next year or so becoming closer, mainly through our common interest in music and rock and roll from the USA. Interests in school activities waned in favour of girls, smoking and the music. When skiffle came along it presented the opportunity to channel our interests.

�� As my mother had to work to provide for the family, the empty house in Halewood Drive was a haven for missing school and practising guitar playing. John and I went for guitar lessons, briefly, but both wanted instant music rather than lessons and it was then that John's mother taught us to play banjo chords, far easier and they sounded passable - just.

�� The Quarrymen group was born and my interest in academic achievements was lost completely. Somehow I managed to obtain GCEe passes in English, Mathematics and History at the end of the fifth year at Quarry. I then left to take up an apprenticeship in engineering but kept up my school friendships, my main interest continuing to be music and the group.

�� I found engineering equally as boring as schoolwork and after I left the Quarrymen in 1958, joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet navigating officer. On leave from the navy, I continued to see John and some of the others, but contact was lost after the group first recorded with EMI.

�� I left the navy in 1964 when I married Relda. The wedding was at Woolton Parish Church. Since leaving the navy I worked first for the Home Office Prisons Department, implementing up to date manufacturing procedures in prison factories and later for the Scottish Prison Service, when recruited to modernise prisoners� work in Scotland. This was in 1972 and I have lived in Scotland ever since. I have three sons, all now living and working in Edinburgh.

�� I left the Prison Service in 1994 to concentrate on running the family business, a chain of Dry Cleaners.

�� In January 1997, for the first time, I was tempted back to Liverpool to meet 'some' of the former Quarrymen with an invitation to the Cavern Club's 40th anniversary. All the originals turned up and out of this came the group's performance at Woolton in July. I had to buy a guitar and re-learn a few chords.

Obituary from the Guardian:

Before the Beatles there were the Quarrymen, a skiffle group featuring schoolfriends John Lennon and Eric Griffiths, who has died aged 64 of pancreatic cancer. In 1997 Griffiths re-formed the Quarrymen, who performed at Beatles conventions all over the world.

He was born in Denbigh, North Wales, moving to Liverpool with his mother and sister four years later. His father was an RAF pilot who died in the second world war. At the age of 11, Griffiths won a scholarship to Quarry Bank high school in Mossley Hill. There, he was placed in the same house as Pete Shotton and John Lennon, both of whom shared his enthusiasm for "music, girls and smoking", as he would later put it.

The skiffle craze detonated by Lonnie Donegan's 1956 hit record Rock Island Line inspired the trio, like thousands of other British teenagers, to form their own group. Griffiths later recalled: "John and I went for guitar lessons but we wanted instant music. It was then that John's mother taught us to play banjo chords. They were far easier and they sounded just passable."

Rehearsals were held at Griffiths's home, which was empty during the day as Eric's widowed mother was out at work.

In July 1957 the Quarrymen appeared at St Peter's Church fete in Woolton. This was the auspicious occasion on which the 15-year-old Paul McCartney met Lennon. Within weeks Paul was in the group and the most famous partnership in popular music had been formed - although Griffiths said that some months later he had to talk John out of forming a new group without Paul.

Griffiths left the group in 1958 when the young George Harrison supplanted him as principal guitarist. He was asked to become the bass guitarist, but did not want to saddle himself with the hire purchase loan needed to acquire a guitar and amplifier. The Quarrymen disbanded a year later, leaving John, Paul, George and Pete Best to form the Beatles in 1960.

After leaving school, Eric Griffiths had taken up an engineering apprenticeship, but he soon left this to join the Merchant Navy as a cadet navigation officer. He kept in touch with Lennon during shore leave until the Beatles moved to London.

Griffiths left the navy in 1964 for a career in the prison service. He introduced new manufacturing procedures for prisoners' work and in 1972 moved to Edinburgh to a similar post, modernising work systems in Scottish prisons. He retired in 1994 to run a family dry-cleaning business. In 1997 he was invited back to Liverpool for the 40th anniversary of the Cavern Club, where the Quarrymen had frequently performed in the 1950s.

There he was reunited with Pete Shotton and other former members and was inspired to restart the Quarrymen. "I had to buy a guitar and relearn a few chords," he said.

The group recorded the CD Get Back Together, recreating the original Quarrymen repertoire, a mixture of skiffle favourites and rock'n'roll numbers including Come Go With Me, which John Lennon had been singing when Paul McCartney first heard the group. Somewhat to their surprise, the Quarrymen were soon in demand to play and speak at Beatles conventions, including a scholarly Beatles Colloquium in Havana in 1998. In 2001, a book about the group by Beatles biographer Hunter Davies was published, and a second CD, Songs We Remember, was released last month.

Griffiths became ill after a Quarrymen concert in Trondheim, Norway, in December. He died at home in Edinburgh. He is survived by his wife, Relda, and three sons.

� Eric Griffiths, musician and prison service manager, born October 31 1940; died January 29 2005